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Friday, April 17, 2009

Team Improvement

A couple of posts ago I said I would get WWS guides from the specific role viewpoints, and they are in the works. I have found a tank and dps specialist to describe how they use WWS to improve their gameplay, and I am working on the part from the healer viewpoint myself. So keep an eye out for them, they should be up soon!

Raiding is teamwork, and for teamwork you need to have a team, and to make high-end raiding possible you need to have a pretty darn good team.

There are as many different motivations to play World of Warcraft as there are players, and it isn't only the raidleader's job to work on teamwork. Every raid member should work on keeping the raid motivated and on keeping the team working together as a well oiled fighting machine.

DestinationAs a team you need to work out what you want to do within the game. Be it raiding the hardest dungeons, arena, battlegrounds, or just a quest, the goal needs to be clear. Only once you have established the common goal you can work together as a team to achieve that goal.

ConductThe basic rule here is from the noted behavioral psychologist, B.F. Skinner "Any behaviour that is rewarded will be repeated". I would like to add another quote from Dave Fellman, who says: "Any behaviour that is tolerated, will tend to be repeated."

As a team you have to work out what is accepted and what isn't. When some raid members show unwanted behaviour then make sure that you point this out to the member, not as a person but as a group. The individual member should be made aware of the fact that the team doesn't appreciate the shown behaviour.

OwnershipEach raid member is responsible for their specific task. If every member truly feels like it is their responsiblity to keep up the good work for the good of the team, they are more likely to keep it on a high level.

Tip: Have different people call out the movements, and you will see that they generally take the fight a whole lot more serious all of a sudden.

RecognitionCompliment eachother on a job well done, it will make you feel much better about the victory you have just achieved.

TrustWithin a team every team member needs to be able to trust the other team members to do their individual job. Often when people start distrusting eachother there are several things that can happen:

They start picking up parts of other people's jobs and start missing out on their own respective job

They quietly distrust this person and become dissatisfied with the team, causing motivation to waver

Or they openly start an argument about it, causing the atmosphere in the group to become less good

The only way to handle distrust in a good way is by speaking about it openly, which brings me to the next point.

CommunicationCommunicate dissatisfaction, strategies, happyness, raid hours, availability, and I can keep the list going for a while. Just make sure that the rest of your team is aware of what is happening.

Weakest LinkFinally, there is this saying that a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. I completely disagree with this saying.

One person on their own might be weak, but with the right type of support they can become stronger and a solid part of the team, so much even that the fact they individually are the weakest link is no longer noticable within the team effort.

In my opinion the whole team needs to work on growing the individual member, and in turn each raid member has the responsibility to work on becoming as strong as they can be.

The FlowWhen all of this teamwork talk comes together you get into this state that is generally called Flow. The definition wikipedia gives is: "Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity."

The Flow is that place your raid was in when you got undying or immortal effortlessly it seemed. It is what you want to strive for as a team, and you will see that raiding just becomes that little bit easier, more fun, and more rewarding as a player when you manage to find it.

2 comments:

Sevei, I'm sure you've been there once or twice. It's that place where you feel everything comes together and everything feels to go just right, and you got this high feeling that nothing in the world could take you down that day ^_^

And you know what, you can even be wiping during a raid and still be in the Flow. :)